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That's not what it's for.
Mar. 19th, 2010 08:22 amMy dear physician:
While I am most pleased to see that Taoism and its holistic approach to living are becoming familiar to the Western word, I'm afraid I must request that you yourself refrain from claiming to be an expert or indeed in any position to teach.
While it would be patently untrue to claim that Taoism is apolitical (its association with Confucianism is perhaps the most prominent example of how political it can be), it is not for you to take the concepts and teachings of people far wiser than you, and misuse them to carry your own agenda.
For example -
It is foolish and ignorant to state, as if you were the sole authority, that the world is 'too yin' and drop unsubtle hints that this state is inherently toxic (which is admittedly not incorrect, however too much yang is just as dangerous - this is why we strive for balance) and it has come to be because women have too much power.
It is foolish and ignorant to dismiss all traditional Western medicine as detrimental and useless because you have arbitrarily decided that it, too, is 'too yin'. Perhaps you are one of the sort who considers natural medicines harmless because they are "natural"? Have you forgotten that acetylsalicylic acid is a distillation of willow bark, and that your heart medicine is derived from the foxglove? It seems so. Let me assure you that "natural" products can be just as potent and dangerous as refined or distilled ones, or ones created by chemists in a laboratory.
It is foolish and ignorant to take the concepts of yang and yin and whimsically apply them to ethnicities - that is, class different ethnicities as innately yin or innately yang...and thus begin to make baseless and bigoted statements about said people.
You are no Taoist. You have no concept of what Taoism is meant to be. You clearly have forgotten the sānbǎo...if ever you knew what they were in the first place.
Allow me to remind you: cí (慈), jiǎn (儉), bugan wei tianxia xian (不敢為天下先). That is: compassion, frugality, and not daring to put oneself before all else under heaven - in short, modesty.
Your vainglorious, pompous attitude, your posturing, and your suggestion that compassion is a 'womanly' quality and therefore worthless prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have not understood this way of being at all. You are no Taoist. You are a too-proud novice, a student who fancies himself the master.
If you were an onmyouji, you would have been sacked by your employer and set to wandering, or perhaps eaten by a shikigami by now.
Do not think to call yourself a master if you cannot understand the very bones of the teachings. I am much older than you, sir, and I daren't call myself 'master' yet.
'A little learning is a dangerous thing' indeed. You prove that handily.
May you begin to understand these teachings fully or else pass into obscurity where your dilettante's prattlings can harm none.
-清一色
I have not been this angry in some time. Forgive me this outburst, but I cannot abide seeing such utter nonsense as I read from this ridiculous 'physician'.
While I am most pleased to see that Taoism and its holistic approach to living are becoming familiar to the Western word, I'm afraid I must request that you yourself refrain from claiming to be an expert or indeed in any position to teach.
While it would be patently untrue to claim that Taoism is apolitical (its association with Confucianism is perhaps the most prominent example of how political it can be), it is not for you to take the concepts and teachings of people far wiser than you, and misuse them to carry your own agenda.
For example -
It is foolish and ignorant to state, as if you were the sole authority, that the world is 'too yin' and drop unsubtle hints that this state is inherently toxic (which is admittedly not incorrect, however too much yang is just as dangerous - this is why we strive for balance) and it has come to be because women have too much power.
It is foolish and ignorant to dismiss all traditional Western medicine as detrimental and useless because you have arbitrarily decided that it, too, is 'too yin'. Perhaps you are one of the sort who considers natural medicines harmless because they are "natural"? Have you forgotten that acetylsalicylic acid is a distillation of willow bark, and that your heart medicine is derived from the foxglove? It seems so. Let me assure you that "natural" products can be just as potent and dangerous as refined or distilled ones, or ones created by chemists in a laboratory.
It is foolish and ignorant to take the concepts of yang and yin and whimsically apply them to ethnicities - that is, class different ethnicities as innately yin or innately yang...and thus begin to make baseless and bigoted statements about said people.
You are no Taoist. You have no concept of what Taoism is meant to be. You clearly have forgotten the sānbǎo...if ever you knew what they were in the first place.
Allow me to remind you: cí (慈), jiǎn (儉), bugan wei tianxia xian (不敢為天下先). That is: compassion, frugality, and not daring to put oneself before all else under heaven - in short, modesty.
Your vainglorious, pompous attitude, your posturing, and your suggestion that compassion is a 'womanly' quality and therefore worthless prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have not understood this way of being at all. You are no Taoist. You are a too-proud novice, a student who fancies himself the master.
If you were an onmyouji, you would have been sacked by your employer and set to wandering, or perhaps eaten by a shikigami by now.
Do not think to call yourself a master if you cannot understand the very bones of the teachings. I am much older than you, sir, and I daren't call myself 'master' yet.
'A little learning is a dangerous thing' indeed. You prove that handily.
May you begin to understand these teachings fully or else pass into obscurity where your dilettante's prattlings can harm none.
-清一色
I have not been this angry in some time. Forgive me this outburst, but I cannot abide seeing such utter nonsense as I read from this ridiculous 'physician'.
